


Rainwater and Roses

by tekhnicolor



Series: The Ficlet Universe [4]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 04:44:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3596814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tekhnicolor/pseuds/tekhnicolor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It’s almost enough to save him. He can feel the scramble of his hearts slowly beginning to wane, the dusk slipping away, the quiet lingering of the twilight hour. His world waking up. Midnight and winter. And there she is: morning and spring. She keeps her eyes closed when he kisses her. This is the only way he knows how to say goodbye: <i>I love you, I love you, I love you."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Rainwater and Roses

**Author's Note:**

> PWP. Oneshot. There is no plot to be found here.
> 
> Also this is un-beta'ed so if something is blatantly terrible, it's solely and entirely my fault.

He’s there when she wakes up. He’s tinkering with the TARDIS console, muttering over a few adjustments that he most definitely adjusted yesterday, while she yawns over a cuppa. She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor next to him when he finishes, pokes his head out from under the console and grins at her through through grease-covered glasses. He asks her where she wants to go and she says a sunset, one that she’s never seen before.

His grin fades into a different sort of smile.  
This will be the day, he knows.

~

There’s a planet quieter than an empty room, where the sun sets in silver, with rich hues of purple and blue and this world is long-forgotten, he tells her. Some things just are.  
But he remembered it, she reminds him. And he nods. It’s difficult to forget beautiful things.

He lays his coat across the grass, and when they lie down, the sky is smudged with a panoply of colours before them. She turns and rests her head on the space between his shoulder and chest, and it’s the closest they’ve been, ever. He smooths a hand over the gold of her hair and against her back, again and again, hopes she feels safe when she’s with him, prays the beating of his hearts will slow to something less erratic.

After a while, he watches as she uses a thread of courage to skate her hand across his ribs, to tuck it under his side and hold him, and he lifts his back a little so that she can. She’s so brave, always has been, and he loves it, loves her, loves them, loves the way she makes him want to keep his promise to never be cowardly. And so it’s gentle, when he pulls her to him, and she weaves a leg through his almost accidentally. He presses his lips to the crown of her head. When she sighs a little, he leaves them there. Her hair smells like strawberries. The sun slips beneath the horizon. This can never happen. This should never happen. But there have been so many dreams.

In a moment he turns to her so that her heart is pressed to his chest, and if he could keep it there forever he would. She’s breathing into the hollow at his throat, and he drapes his arm over her waist, resting his palm at the small of her back for only a moment. He traces the hills and valleys up and down her vertebrae.

She’s beautiful when she’s quiet. Well. She’s beautiful always. But when everything is still and muted and he can hear the echo of her breath like a wave against the shore, that’s when he falls in love with her. It’s the small moments, the ones when she’s not paying attention, the ones when she’s busy examining her nails or talking off-handedly about something she loves, that he can’t take his eyes off of her. It’s hard not to love Rose Tyler. Not that he tries.

In fact, he can’t seem to recall the days he had, but he figures they must have been some of the most awful days of his life. Because it’s so easy now, to push himself up on an elbow and roll over until she’s below him, to touch his fingertips to her temples and the corners of her lips, to watch her eyes narrow in confusion and grow wide with wonder, to count the seconds and nanoseconds it takes for her to settle into an easy understanding. _He loves her, he loves her, he loves her,_ and why don’t the words mean enough?

He’s hesitant suddenly as she pulls herself up by his lapels. But she only plants a kiss on his forehead and then lies back against his coat. His ears, finely-attuned, pick up the little crinkling noises the fabric makes. She closes her eyes. Breaths in. He lowers himself to her. Breaths out. It’s almost enough to save him. He can feel the scramble of his hearts slowly beginning to wane, the dusk slipping away, the quiet lingering of the twilight hour. His world waking up. Midnight and winter. And there she is: morning and spring. She keeps her eyes closed when he kisses her. This is the only way he knows how to say goodbye: _I love you, I love you, I love you._

She tastes like rainwater and roses, those little droplets that slip down the flowers’ petals. There are words, he knows, for the way she makes him feel, descriptions for the way her hair spills over and through his fingers, epithets for the smallest of her sighs against his lips, but they are gone. He can’t remember, and after a while he begins to believe there isn’t anything _to_ remember. There’s only this, this singular moment. Every point in time and space coalescing right now, right here, every emotion — felt at its extreme — every rush of breath, every listless pair of wandering feet, every heart, every mind, every hello, goodbye, every moment spent alone and every one spent with a hand to hold, every war and respite, every death, life, pain, pleasure, stranger, lover, enemy, friend, everything dark and everything bright and in the end, when it all comes together, when _she_ is here with him in the universe, the brightness triumphs. The light is always braver than the darkness.

It’s their first real kiss. As he takes her top lip between his, he splays his fingers across her ribs, pulling her lower until she’s just — _god,_ yes — there. It would be wrong to say he’s forgotten what this feels like, but he doesn’t think he’s ever even known what this feels like to begin with, ever held onto something so tightly it _hurt,_ like the thorns of a dying rose. He doesn’t think he’s ever loved anyone enough to come undone for, to unwind, unravel, and unveil himself for. Suddenly it kills him to think she’ll one day wilt. But he kisses her, and he presses his body to hers, to the ground beneath them, to the earth he can no longer feel spinning because all of time has slowed. For him, at least. It _is_ relative, after all. He opens his mouth and lets her tongue explore, then traces his along the topography of her molars, the roof of her mouth. The way her body curves to his in order to be closer to him makes warmth spread through his chest, and when he moans against her lips and she responds with a shiver, that warmth rushes all the way to his toes.

He forgets she doesn’t have a respiratory bypass system, and when she pulls away for air he kisses down the column of her neck, draws his tongue across her skin and hums against the flicker of her pulse. She laughs at him, a little, and he chuckles. The newness should be uncomfortable, but it isn’t. Still, it is strange, the feel of her body and his. Like a hug, only better. She runs her nails across his scalp, tugs at the hair at the nape of his neck, pulls him up to kiss him again. Definitely better.

He moves like a shadow above her. Far away the stars glitter like city lights, street lamps on the longest road he’ll ever travel. She’ll be at the end of it though, he knows. Pressing one last kiss to her lips, he pulls away, pushing himself onto his knees above her. The breeze rushes around them, carrying with it traces of music.

"The trees," he tells her, and it’s the first thing either of them has said in so long. Though hushed, his voice is loud and dissonant alongside the music. "They’re singing." His eyes soften. When she whispers _why,_ he turns his head towards the sound, smiles a little. “Because they can. Because it’s beautiful.”

The woods lie somewhere off to their east, and he thinks he can see branches swaying, silhouettes against the horizon. He removes his jacket, one sleeve hurriedly and then pauses at the next — still kneeling above her, still watching the distant woods — and then finally he turns back to her, letting it slip from his arm and pool on the grass beside them.

There’s a glittering in her eyes when he lies down again, and it only brightens as he explores the dip between her collarbone and shoulder, as he watches, motionless, while she removes her shirt, as he maps out a path from her neck to her stomach and then kisses his way back to her mouth. The skin at her throat tastes salty, and he lingers there a moment, lapping at the place where it dips before moving his mouth to her ear. She traces the angles of his body with her hands, and he has to kiss away the giggle that escapes her lips when he can’t hold back a shiver. She’s so beautiful and her eyes are so bright and it’s then that he realizes that the strange warmth washing through his body is happiness. He’s _happy._ He’s so happy. And lying under the stars, he feels like a child again, like this is the beginning, like anything the future holds will be alright because no matter how long it takes him, no matter how fast he runs, he has an endpoint, a destination, a home where he doesn’t have to be alone. He will find her again.

And then she is laying a hand over his trembling ones as he tries for the button of her jeans, and she smiles at him softly, and helps him with his task. Her hand at the back of his neck steadies him. He breathes, though it’s more like he’s gulping in air. Swallows. Thinks he should say something but for once, he isn’t quite sure how.

"What are we doing?" she teases him, tongue poking to the corner of her mouth.

The trees are humming still. He covers her body with his own.

"Well, we came to see a sunset." He drags his nose across her cheek, licks behind her ear. He grins into her neck when she lets out a pleased hum. "And we’ve seen it."

The breeze catches strands of their hair. Her skin is so warm against his.

"And now?"

The fire in his blood burns precariously close to overwhelming. It’s agony, keeping himself from her.

"Well, quite frankly," and his voice is lower than he intended, "I’d really like to make love to you, if that’s alright. Didn’t plan much else. Not that I planned this. Not that I’ve _never_ planned this. Ah.” He’d normally scratch the back of his head sheepishly after an admission like that, possibly even try to run, but as it happens, he’s much too satisfied with his current position to make any drastic changes.

"Alright."

He smooths a hand up the back of her thigh. Hooks her leg around his waist.

"What?"

She rolls her eyes at him. Pulls him down closer.

"Alright," she says.

He kisses her. Swallows her final syllable. Closes his eyes. Has to pry his mouth away to gasp for air when he finally pushes inside her. When she cries out, he brushes her hair from her shoulder, kisses the skin there. He can’t help himself. She shifts beneath him, around him, adjusts, and he’s pressing his forehead into her shoulder now, her hands winding through his hair, grasping at his shoulders, nails scraping along his back.

It’s holding on and it’s letting go. It’s taking and giving, selfish and selfless. It hurts, _oh Rassilon_ it hurts — and for a moment nothing fills his vision but a blinding white, a light so bright it burns — but in the most perfect way possible. It’s such a beautiful pain. And it’s crossing so many boundaries, taking so many steps. It’s waking up to distance and a facade of smiles meant to hide the cold, and it’s falling asleep to the beating of someone else’s heart, to the heat of someone else’s body and the cadence of someone else’s breath. He can’t think straight, can’t follow a single line of thought, and she’s perfect, everywhere, always, and he counts off digits of pi in his head until his brain’s working properly again. Well. Almost.

He feels his body begin to tense and go rigid above her. Her mouth finds his and he lets her kiss him again before yanking his head away. _Air._ He needs to breathe. And yes, he needs to be kissing her. He needs her, she _is_ his air. And if he was in his right mind, he would be complaining about how poorly his respiratory bypass system has suddenly decided to function. But he isn’t, and he doesn’t, and instead he opens his eyes just barely, moves a hand to her waist, across her stomach. There’s a moment of shared breath, the clumsy swipe of a thumb, and she’s shuddering beneath him. He rocks into her once, twice, holding on, then bites down into her shoulder to hold back a groan that comes anyway. He fists a hand in her hair and she’s so beautiful he doesn’t know _how_ to love her. But he does. _He does, he does, he does._

The words still don’t come.

He whispers a thousand other things to her, rambles into her hair until he’s probably just repeating himself, and then rolls to the side and tugs her to him. She’s still. The music continues into the night. He pulls his coat over her. She finds his hand, holds it. The stars above them shatter like fireworks and fall like rain, and the night goes quiet.

~

She drifts in and out of sleep, and he’s there every time she wakes up. This world is hushed, muted save for the soft strains of a lullaby and the whistle of grass shivering in the wind. Halfway into the night, when she yawns and bumps her nose into his chin on accident before blinking her eyes open, he needs to know if they’re okay. Because this isn’t really the kind of thing he does often. And she should know that; it’s important to him. She brushes her thumbs over the crinkles at the corners of his eyes and it tickles.

"We’ll always be okay."

And he finally believes her.

He tucks her head under his chin and watches the horizon until her breath is steady against his sternum.

"You’re beautiful," he tells her, just before sleep finds him. He mumbles the words sleepily against the shell of her ear and he hopes she knows what he means, hopes she knows what he always means — those unspoken words that exist between every letter of every sentence he’s ever said to her.

_I love you, I love you, I love  
you._


End file.
